How Michael Sabia can make Ottawa move fast and build things

Globe and Mail

4 hours ago

Michael Sabia is being asked to reverse, in a matter of months, an inertia that has taken hold in the nation's capital over decades.
Since Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that the erstwhile chief executive officer of Hydro-Québec will serve as Clerk of the Privy Council – the country's top bureaucrat – Ottawa has been rife with speculation about how Mr. Sabia will try to light a fire under a federal public service accustomed to moving more slowly and cautiously than is demanded by the current moment.
But while much of the chatter following Mr. Sabia's June 11 appointment has been about personnel changes to the bureaucracy's highest ranks – through an expansive shuffle of deputy ministers, the most senior civil servants in each ministry, expected this summer – that only scratches the surface of what's needed to get things rolling.
Hanging in the balance is an agenda, put forward by Mr. Carney to assert Canada's economic sovereignty, that's at odds with the government's implementation capacity to date. It includes fast-tracking energy and infrastructure projects, scaling homegrown technologies, diversifying exports, building housing, reorienting immigration, developing self-reliant supply chains and leveraging industrial gains from increased defence spending.
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The scale of the challenge – and what sorts of structural, cultural and personnel changes could be required – were conveyed to The Globe and Mail in recent interviews with two dozen people closely familiar with the bureaucracy's workings, including current and former deputy ministers and senior political officials.
Although there was recognition that some departments have functioned better than others (and some have stepped up in other times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic and 2008 global financial meltdown), they highlighted an array of overarching barriers that have taken root since the 1990s, if not earlier.
Among them are a depletion of talent despite the bureaucracy's total ranks growing; particular lack of implementation expertise in some economic areas and policy mechanisms Mr. Carney is prioritizing; disconnect between the public and private sectors; a lack of clear lines of accountability; failure to make use of modern technologies; and severe aversion to taking risks.
Mr. Sabia's suitability to tackling all of that, if anyone can, is a subject of considerable debate.
Over a late-career run that has included heading pension giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, serving as deputy finance minister and then leading Hydro-Québec, he's earned a reputation as a creative policy maker and architect of big, ambitious projects. Among them are the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the Canada Growth Fund and a new hydroelectricity relationship between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. He is also, like Mr. Carney, a rare Canadian executive who has moved fluidly between government and the private sector, giving him an unusual combination of institutional knowledge and outside perspective.
At the same time, with his federal experience limited mostly to the Finance department, he may have less knowledge of government-wide dynamics than previous clerks who were career bureaucrats. Sharing some of Mr. Carney's suffer-no-fools reputation, it's an open question how he'll fare at bringing others along. And with a recent pattern of staying in jobs long enough to set big plans in motion and then moving on, it's not clear how much emphasis he'll place on long-term systemic reforms.
But If ever there were a time for impatience to be a virtue, this might be it.
While there are widespread calls around Ottawa for a formal, government-wide program review to comprehensively reallocate resources and modernize rules and processes – the sort of effort last seriously undertaken by Jean Chrétien's government in the '90s – that push could take most of Mr. Carney's mandate to complete. By then, the opportunity to seize on Canada's elbows-up moment with a transformative economic agenda, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump, might have passed.
The hope among some reform-minded government veterans is that Mr. Carney and Mr. Sabia land on a two-track approach – in which they set in motion long-term structural overhaul, to leave the government in better shape than they found it, but more immediately send whatever signals and create whatever workarounds are needed to get stuff done now.
That may not be a viable pathway to overcoming every obstacle. There may, for instance, be few quick fixes for Ottawa's reliance on outdated technologies and information systems.
But three of the biggest potential obstacles to implementing Mr. Carney's agenda are instructive, in terms of how it could work.
A common perception in Ottawa is that high-level bureaucratic talent has diminished over the past couple of decades.
More specifically, there are widely acknowledged expertise gaps. In a government that has traditionally done most spending through grants and transfer payments, that includes lack of comfort with more complex financial tools that Mr. Carney may be looking to deploy in industrial strategies. And lack of employment mobility, between the public and private sectors, has contributed to a perceived disconnect between career bureaucrats in Ottawa and policies' real-world impacts.
There are many fundamental ways to address those shortcoming – new strategies around recruitment and career advancement, changing pay structures, using technology to expedite glacial hiring processes. Most contentiously, but increasingly whispered about, Ottawa could loosen bilingualism requirements to broaden its pool.
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In the near term, the most obvious lever is the anticipated deputy-minister shuffle, following a small shuffle that took place this month. It could see Mr. Sabia bringing in some new faces, and perhaps more so trying to elevate younger talent already in the bureaucracy, even if they have not worked their way up as gradually as has been customary.
But many people interviewed for this story also suggested Ottawa may have to get more creative about bringing in people from industry – and possibly provincial governments – to work on policy priorities of Mr. Carney's for which they have specific expertise.
That could potentially be done under Interchange Canada, an underutilized federal program enabling exchanges between the public and private sectors. It could also see people seconded from outside government, forming hybrid teams with bureaucrats to advance key files.
Navigating conflict-of-interest considerations would be a challenge – but not, by most accounts, an insurmountable one. And Mr. Sabia's unusual history straddling the public and private sectors could help convince others to do so.
A near-universal lament is that civil servants feel incentivized to keep their heads down and avoid risks – in putting forward new ideas, or taking ownership of moving policies forward.
That's partly because of additional rules and guidelines layered on after any sort of spending or ethics controversy. Paring those down, to maintain but simplify accountability, is seen as a long-term play.
But it's also because of a common perception that politicians are prepared to throw bureaucrats under the bus – or shove them in front of parliamentary committees – at the first sign of trouble, rather than taking heat themselves. And that's where there may be an opportunity to quickly pursue culture change.
Mr. Sabia could help by sending a signal across the bureaucracy that people who take initiative and move quickly will be valued.
Much will come down to Mr. Carney. His tone, early on, has suggested that expedience and ambition are the priority. But bureaucrats tend to say that the real message about risk tolerance will come from how tolerant he and his ministers prove when moving fast causes something to go wrong.
Another oft-cited reason for slowness and lack of individual initiative is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
While recent growth of the total federal workforce (well above 300,000 people) is likely to be targeted by Mr. Carney for cost savings, ballooning upper ranks – assistant deputy ministers, associate deputy ministers, directors-general, etc. – have particularly bogged down decision-making by creating hierarchical confusion.
So too, bureaucrats counter, has an excess of political staff – numbering around 800, by the end of former prime minister Justin Trudeau's tenure, far more than in other Westminster democracies – dipping in and out of files. Not to mention decisions notoriously getting log-jammed in the Prime Minister's Office.
That crowdedness is crying out for a review aimed at paring back and simplifying lines of authority. But some of that could be done informally, for now.
While a small number of top priorities will inevitably have heavy involvement from the PMO – and the Privy Council Office, the (also enlarged) bureaucratic department that supports it – the rest could be delegated to ministries with minimal central interference. And deputies there could be pushed to identify a small number of their top performers to push things through, bruised egos be damned.
As with other possible quick fixes, it could be inelegant.
But Mr. Carney has been elected, and Mr. Sabia appointed, with promised focus on results.
Those results may include a dramatically restructured federal government. But they may not have time to wait for it, if they want to get everything else done.